Dispute leads to wild ride

A man was hurt while hanging onto a pickup truck being driven through city streets for about three miles, holding his cellphone and pleading for help to a police dispatcher who remained on the line during the entire ordeal, Troy Police spokesman Capt. John Cooney said.

No charges have been filed as investigators try to sort out the dispute between two men who knew each other, Cooney said.

The incident began at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Stewart’s on Congress Street and ended at Walmart on Hoosick Road in Brunswick when the injured man broke free of the truck, Cooney said. Surveillance videos are being analyzed, but according to witnesses no weapons were involved, Cooney said.

Kowalik held onto his cellphone and sounded “excited and fearful” in his extended call to a police dispatcher as he scrambled from the truck bed to a running board “and may have hit the ground once or twice” while he tried to get free of the vehicle, Cooney said.